Social Enterprise Resource Management

One Response to “Ownership Of Property , Business and Voting Rights of NRBS’”

1. Shabbir A Bashar, PhD says:

   December 2, 2007 at 11:54 am

   Re: The Debate About The Rights of NRBs

   Just because other countries, whether developed or not, have or have had rules restricting property and business ownership rights of their respective non-resident citizens (cannot think of any country in the world that does this) or foreigners is not a good enough reason to follow suit and apply these draconian rules to Bangladesh as Tayeb Husain of Sweden (NFB, November 30, 2007) proposes. He tries to justify these restrictions by claiming that the business opportunities in Bangladesh are meager. This is not true. His claim that the banking facilities are poor in Bangladesh is also debatable. Yes the capital market may not be as thriving as in the economic giants.

   First of all, business opportunities in Bangladesh are huge. GMG airlines is an example of a growing business opportunity in the air travel industry of Bangladesh; while the state-run Biman cannot even operate its fleet, this private airline has been slowly but surely adding to its domestic and international routes and correspondingly its fleet of modern aircrafts. Another example is the mushrooming of the mobile phone companies that now boast a greater number of subscribers than the state-run white elephant, namely the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB). The power sector and supporting engineering industries (high-voltage equipment manufacturers) is yet another example of technology based business opportunities. Each of these sectors have raised capital either locally or brought in foreign capital to grow their respective industries and an economic base in Bangladesh. My point is, it should be left up to the businessmen to decide whether their investment of capital, resources or toil in Bangladesh will be profitable or not. The government should remove as much red tape as possible to make Bangladesh an investment friendly country. We have seen the benefits of such visionary steps taken by the late Rajiv Gandhi making India a major destination of foreign capital. As for Mr. Husain’s complaint about lack of space in Bangladesh, may I suggest that he looks at the Singapore case and realizes that with adequate planning and resource management, even a tiny nation can become one of the most efficient work places in the world within a matter of decades. In short, I do not buy any of his arguments.

   What is really curious about his letter is that he seems fine with foreign investors coming into Bangladesh to invest – as long as they are not “Jack and Harry” foreigners or Bangladesh citizens with foreign passports. My question is why should Bangladesh care about who the investors are? As long as their money is sitting in Bangladesh, it is helping the local capital market. In most cases, the capital also creates jobs for resident Bangladeshis and ultimately adds to the revenue through income tax not to mention reduces the state burden of unemployment. So I totally fail to understand where the allergy against Bangladeshis with dual citizenship actually emanates from.

   Mr. Husain says that agricultural land in Bangladesh, allegedly owned by non-resident Bangladeshis, is sitting idle. I would like to see the data supporting this and compare that to what percentage of such land also belongs to resident Bangladeshi city dwellers. In any case, there cannot be one set of rules for resident Bangladeshis and another set of rules for non-resident Bangladeshis. While it totally makes sense to efficiently utilize our dwindling agricultural land (natural disasters, aisles between land making cultivation tedious etc.,) excluding NRBs from owning such land outright is totally discriminatory and unacceptable. There can be incentives instead of punishment; there can be private agricultural corporations that would lease the land from their owners (regardless of their place of residence) and operate it for profit in much the same way we have seen the growth of multi-storey residential and commercial buildings in Dhaka by privately owned property developers. Government should simply facilitate the growth of such corporations instead of taking on more centrally managed and bureaucratic nightmares. Under no circumstances should the government act in a way that appears as punishment as Mr. Husain proposes. Yes, that sort of irrational views irritate me given that most if not all government-managed industries are not making a profit. Without open competition, people will not ultimately benefit.

   Allow me to quote the industries adviser (The New Age, December 2, 2007), Geteeara Safiya Chowdhury, “Excessive control of the government has created problem in making easy availability of fertilizer”. The same article exemplifies the pitfalls of ineffective government oversight into what should be a private industry concern: the state-owned sugar mill has incurred a loss of Tk 85 crore during the outgoing season mainly because of dumping health hazardous Indian sugar in Bangladesh market.

   Mr. Husain continues to make sweeping remarks without citing facts: “people sending money home and mak(ing) Bangladesh treasury fatter .. are not those Bangladeshi origin foreign citizens in Europe and North America.” However, he is absolutely correct in stating that bulk of the remittance is from the semi-skilled and unskilled Bangladeshi laborers in the Middle East. Allow me to quote from an editorial in the New Age (September 7, 2007):

   “The decision of a recent inter-ministerial meeting to afford preferential treatment to non-resident Bangladeshis in terms of quota facility for their children seeking enrolment into public schools and higher educational institutions, special police protection and priority services in mutation of land and transfer of property suggests that the state has realized the need to recognize the contribution of more than 4.5 million Bangladeshis working overseas. The initiative, albeit belated, is indeed welcome because it is the remittance from the NRBs – coupled with the export earnings of the readymade garment sector and tireless contribution of the farmers – that has propped the economy for so many years now. Overseas Bangladeshi workers have till date remained largely neglected by the state despite their significant contribution to the economy, which, according to official statistics, hit a record high of $5.97 billion in 2006-07.”

   Furthermore, the northeast of Bangladesh, primarily Sylhet, has developed ahead of the rest of the country through remittances from former residents who are now thriving (restaurant) business owners in many parts of Europe, and to a lesser extent but increasingly so in North America. Aside from the fact that many of these folks – through their catering industries have also raised the cultural profile of Bangladesh – some of them are also branching out into directly investing in property development and private airline-industry in Bangladesh; feel free to look up “Britannia Properties” (a British-Bangla Joint Venture) and “Royal Bengal Airline” (founded by a group of British Bangladeshi professionals and businessmen who see the growth in the Asian economy, in particular the travel sector within Southeast Asia, as an opportunity in the market for a new airline).

   For completeness, I would also like to add some of the contributions of NRBs residing in North America including those Mr. Husain calls “run-away PhDs”. These include research for finding solutions to Arsenic Pollution in Bangladesh; setting up organizations for promoting education in Bangladesh (setting up new schools, sending computers to educational institutes, providing scholarships to poor students); lobbying North American politicians to promote trade with Bangladesh. Their contributions may not be as immediate as sending billions of dollars home, but these efforts are nevertheless important in the medium to long term development of Bangladesh and deserve praise and recognition.

   Unlike soft-loans or donations from foreign governments and NGOs, the money and techinal help from NRBs comes without any conditions. Again, allow me to quote from a paper entitled “Indigenous Knowledge Development in Bangladesh: Present and Future” published in the Journal of Third World Studies, Spring 2004: “In the world today it is hard to believe that the external funding would come without conditions, which in this case would be imposed by the very states which have taken historically a lead role in destroying the indigenous resources, technologies, skills and techniques as part of the marketing strategy of their kind of ‘development’- its idea and practice.”

   To discriminate against any NRBs whether by restricting their constitutional rights to vote, own property or operate businesses in Bangladesh is totally immoral and tantamount to biting a hand that feeds. I rest my case.

   Shabbir A. Bashar, Ph.D.

   Vancouver, USA

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